After months of an impasse in negotiations over a new labor contract, teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) this Monday reported to picket lines rather than the classroom. This strike, the first in 30 years for the nation’s second-largest school district, takes on added significance as it follows last year’s spring of discontent, where we saw large-scale teacher strikes and protests in a number of states.

Those following these developments may ask: Is this strike a continuation of the wave that originated out of West Virginia last year? And will it prompt more teacher actions, expanding the map even further?

In this piece, I contrast what we’re seeing on the ground in LAUSD with the events of last spring. Taking the number of differences into account, my conclusion is that the Los Angeles teachers’ strike marks a return to typical collective bargaining processes, rather than a resurgence of a teachers’ spring.

State versus local actions

While the crowd size of the LAUSD strike rivals many of the actions we saw last spring, it is important to highlight that this is still a local action. The strike is targeted at leaders in district offices in the hopes of securing the terms of a district labor contract (and other policies related to class size and support staff in the district). The fact that it has been 20-plus months since there has been an effective agreement between LA’s teachers’ union and school district is enough of a cause for the situation to come to an impasse. Contrast this with 2018’s teacher actions, though, where actions crossed district boundaries and prompted teachers to flock to state capitol buildings to prompt elected officials to take statewide actions.

Union versus grassroots organization

The political context and its implications for union power is another point of divergence. California’s status as a reliably blue state is an obvious difference against last year’s actions that occurred in primarily red states. Though the partisan lean of a state is not directly important here, the labor laws are—and red states often have comparatively weaker labor laws (e.g., many right-to-work states) that undermine union strength. With generally weak union leadership in these states, most of the teacher actions last spring saw unions taking their cues from grassroots organizers like #Red4ED. Even the first teachers’ strike in West Virginia last spring, which was mediated through the state union, continued several days as a wildcat strike after union representatives ordered teachers back to the classroom. The strike in LAUSD, however, is the ultimate step of teacher dissatisfaction in a typical union-represented, collective-bargaining process.

Riding a wave of public sentiment

It would be disingenuous to say that these are entirely unrelated strikes. The teacher activism of last year was widely reported on, raising awareness about the plight of educators in many states nationwide. Multiplesurveys of parents and the public at large showed robust support for raising teacher pay following the string of teacher actions last spring. The #Red4ED movement has been a presence both in LA and in other cities showing solidarity over the walkout.

The wave of public sentiment is not confined to the coast. Teachers in Denver are also mulling over a strike there, with robust public support. Earlier this past fall, Seattle narrowly averted a teacher strike and several districts in Washington state saw walkouts. Yet, my sense is that each of these new strike sites and the ongoing one in LAUSD are qualitatively different kinds of actions compared to what we witnessed last spring. In fact, according to numbers from Education Week, the U.S. has averaged about 10 teacher strikes per year at the district level since 2010—state-level strikes are much less common.

In other words, last year’s protests were an unprecedented teacher uprising, and this year’s mark a return to normal.

Grace Breazeale contributed to this post.

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By Michael Hansen
After months of an impasse in negotiations over a new labor contract, teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) this Monday reported to picket lines rather than the classroom. This strike, the first in 30 years for the nation’s second-largest school district, takes on added significance as it follows last year’s spring of discontent, where we saw large-scale teacher strikes and protests in a number of states.
Those following these developments may ask: Is this strike a continuation of the wave that originated out of West Virginia last year? And will it prompt more teacher actions, expanding the map even further?
In this piece, I contrast what we’re seeing on the ground in LAUSD with the events of last spring. Taking the number of differences into account, my conclusion is that the Los Angeles teachers' strike marks a return to typical collective bargaining processes, rather than a resurgence of a teachers’ spring.
State versus local actions
While the crowd size of the LAUSD strike rivals many of the actions we saw last spring, it is important to highlight that this is still a local action. The strike is targeted at leaders in district offices in the hopes of securing the terms of a district labor contract (and other policies related to class size and support staff in the district). The fact that it has been 20-plus months since there has been an effective agreement between LA’s teachers' union and school district is enough of a cause for the situation to come to an impasse. Contrast this with 2018’s teacher actions, though, where actions crossed district boundaries and prompted teachers to flock to state capitol buildings to prompt elected officials to take statewide actions.
Union versus grassroots organization
The political context and its implications for union power is another point of divergence. California’s status as a reliably blue state is an obvious difference against last year’s actions that occurred in primarily red states. Though the partisan lean of a state is not directly important here, the labor laws are—and red states often have comparatively weaker labor laws (e.g., many right-to-work states) that undermine union strength. With generally weak union leadership in these states, most of the teacher actions last spring saw unions taking their cues from grassroots organizers like #Red4ED. Even the first teachers' strike in West Virginia last spring, which was mediated through the state union, continued several days as a wildcat strike after union representatives ordered teachers back to the classroom. The strike in LAUSD, however, is the ultimate step of teacher dissatisfaction in a typical union-represented, collective-bargaining process.
Pile-on issues
The actions of both this year and last are not simply about pay—as teachers have made other demands—yet those other demands look different in LA in comparison to those of last year. Last year, teachers frequently advocated for a general increase in school funding and rethinking how states were using tax revenue to invest in schools. Contrast this with LAUSD, where teachers have concerns about class sizes, over-testing, and the growing presence of charter schools—all of which are more typical union positions.
Riding a wave of public sentiment
It would be disingenuous to say that these are entirely unrelated strikes. The teacher activism of last year was widely reported on, raising awareness about the plight of educators in many states nationwide. Multiple surveys of parents and the public at large showed robust support for raising teacher pay following the string of teacher actions last spring. The #Red4ED movement has been a presence both in LA and in other cities showing solidarity over the walkout.
The wave of public sentiment is not confined to the coast. Teachers in Denver are also mulling over a strike there, with ... By Michael Hansen
After months of an impasse in negotiations over a new labor contract, teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) this Monday reported to picket lines rather than the classroom. This strike, the first in 30 years ... https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/universities-need-to-lead-in-serving-humanity/Universities need to lead in serving humanityhttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/592673906/0/brookingsrss/topics/education~Universities-need-to-lead-in-serving-humanity/
Thu, 17 Jan 2019 22:47:26 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?post_type=opinion&p=558636

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By Maysa Jalbout

Today, more than ever, we are in urgent need for universities to lead the charge in thinking much more openly, creatively, and ambitiously about the challenges we face in local communities and across the planet.

Given the urgency, scale, and magnitude of the challenges we face—unprecedented numbers of refugees across the globe, persistent income inequality, and devastating loss of fertile land at the same time as exponential technological developments posing radical changes and threats to everything from our jobs to our security to our very own humanity—universities are best positioned to address them.

However, higher education institutions—including governments, businesses, and philanthropic entities that invest in them—have not always worked together with the urgency and clarity of purpose needed to serve humanity.

Funding models have pushed universities into adopting a mentality of scarcity, competing for a narrow pool of resources rather than favoring a mentality of abundance that would incentivize stretching for new goals and creating new opportunities.

And too many private and philanthropic investments in universities have focused on implementing incremental initiatives rather than on system-wide changes that would yield the best outcomes.

Going forward, we need to build new types of funding models and partnerships that reverse these counterproductive approaches. We need to focus on partnerships that further the urgency and clarity of purpose of serving humanity, incentivize a mentality of abundance, and seek big impact system-wide approaches. It is only when we deploy these approaches that we can drive toward three of the most critical shifts needed in higher education.

Shift #1: From universities investing in their reputation and financial security to investing in solving some of the most critical challenges of our time

Marketing and fundraising alone will not guarantee a university’s reputation and financial security.

Only a university that dedicates itself to solving pressing challenges will be assured the relevance and support of its community, and attract top talent, philanthropic money, and research funding.

As the adage says, “You are what you measure.” While not perfect, current impact reports are important in quantifying university contributions, mostly in economic terms. For example, Stanford University claims that its enterprises generate $2.7 trillion in annual revenues and over 5 million jobs, roughly equivalent to the 10th largest economy in the world.

Harvard claims that its living alumni have created over 146,000 for-profit and nonprofit ventures, over 20 million jobs, and annual revenues of $3.9 trillion—greater than the gross domestic product of Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy.

But impact is not limited to jobs and revenue.

Sometimes universities are best positioned to address the problems at their doorsteps. For decades, American University of Beirut’s (AUB) hospital and medical staff have been at the forefront of tending to the injured in Lebanon regardless of sect, origin, or financial ability. Carrying that kind of burden can only be understood by the unique location of a university like AUB, where urgent and immediate needs trump long-term, headline-grabbing initiatives.

Other universities build a niche for themselves working on the less visible challenges, like my own alma mater, McMaster University in Canada, which is quietly working on some of the most daunting health issues of our time. In a recent visit, I was struck by its extensive research to understand and address learning difficulties in the classroom—from the rise in autism, ADHD, and other special needs. CanChild’s research and inclusive education model is openly available online and will soon offer toolkits and trainings for communities around the world.

Many universities have impact in their communities, but we do not value this impact enough. We should applaud universities humbly chipping away at inequity and building more inclusivity.

New measurement frameworks, such as the Times Higher Education University Ranking to measure institutions’ success in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, are a welcome new development and elevate the public perception of the universities most committed to service to humanity.

Overall, the existing models of building reputations through rankings and endowments are working in the favor of a few elite universities. Universities that want to join the ranks of excellence cannot compete in this model as it stands. They are better served, and can better serve, by shifting to a strategy that focuses their partnerships, resources, and talent in solving real problems. This is what will guarantee their relevance, improve their reputation, and sustain their futures.

Shift #2: From universities making modest efforts to increase inclusion in student bodies to making education open for all regardless of status and financial ability

Scholarship programs like those offered by big foundations are important and have had a marked impact on the lives of thousands of students in the U.S., the Middle East, and around the world. But they cannot be the answer alone. The number of young people who deserve a quality higher education far outweighs what philanthropy can offer. Even massive contributions to endowment funds will only reach a select, lucky few every year.

In the meantime, inequality in access to education continues to grow. In the U.S., access to higher education has become one of the most divisive socio-economic barriers in recent times. In the Arab world, youth from the highest economic background are three times more likely to go to university than the young people from the lowest economic tier, and only one percent of refugee youth everywhere continue to higher education.

Every life changed by a university scholarship or financial aid is a success story we should celebrate. Scholarships that focus on eliminating financial barriers for students before or during universities are essential for students who would not otherwise continue their education. But for every scholarship student, there are millions more who do not get that chance.

Universities must refocus their efforts from raising funds for a few select students to opening education to everyone. With advancement in technologies and improvement in online learning, concerns about maintaining small class sizes or trying to limit campus space no longer hold.

The universities most committed to service to humanity will also be the most inclusive. And make no mistake: This is not just a privilege of top universities that can afford it.

The University Innovation Alliance is comprised of universities as diverse as Georgia State to Purdue. The 11 universities came together with a common goal of innovating within their universities to significantly increase access to education. Today, low-income students in the U.S. are eight times less likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than high-income students (7.4 percent versus 60 percent). Together, the universities set an achievable goal of increasing that number to 30 percent by 2022.

At the same time, some of the world’s top universities are broadening access to education through online learning, whether it is fully accredited degrees, new credentials, or massive open online courses (MOOCs). A review of the offerings on platforms such as edX, Coursera, and Udacity reveals a growing list of opportunities for young people who speak English and have an internet connection.

These types of innovative initiatives are only the beginning. More universities need to play their part in scaling up access to higher education while also considering the special needs of those who are harder to reach.

Initiatives to increase inclusivity on university campuses result in positive outcomes, but, to truly have an impact, universities must adopt new approaches that make higher education available to everyone.

Shift #3: From offering new skills and tools for the rapid changes in today’s workforces to preserving and reinforcing our ethics and values amid radical technological change

This is without a doubt the most challenging and uncertain shift. Universities are already bearing the brunt of the pressure to prepare graduates who are instantly employable, even as changes in work accelerate.

A shift by universities to help make education more accessible will help and will also magnify a change in who we consider to be students. Early impact studies of MOOCs show that short online courses and credentials have had the largest uptake among adults who are educated and already in the workplace. They enroll in popular courses like coding, data analytics, and supply chain management to get ahead in their careers or in anticipation of career changes.

This development has spurred some universities, such as Northeastern University, to think about education as membership-based, where students no longer spend four years studying for a degree but rather come in and out of university on a regular basis.

Other universities are offering their students the chance to learn and work at the same time so that the transition from school to work is seamless. For example, at Waterloo University, one of the world’s largest and most successful providers of cooperative education (combining classroom-based education with practical work experience for credit), just over 96 percent of its co-op graduates obtain a full-time job within six months of graduating.

But, cooperative education, lifelong education, and even MOOCs still fall into the category of incremental change—it is simply not enough.

We live in a time that is not only already experiencing tremendous technological change, but that has inconceivable technological capabilities.

Rapid progress in manipulating DNA, creating parallel worlds and simulations with virtual reality, and relying on artificial intelligence are just three areas of stunning breakthroughs and profound challenges.

These trends could entirely reshape not only work, but the evolution of life on earth—they pose immense questions and threats to humanity.

Universities must respond not only by teaching more coding, but by thinking deeply about what makes us human—our most cherished human traits, ethics, and values—and how we want to evolve as a society.

As institutions that have helped steer society in the past, universities will need to provide leadership now more than ever. This will be far more important than any short-term fixes universities can make, such as trying to keep up with workforce skills amid accelerating change.

What organization is better positioned than the university in addressing the biggest questions of our time and in doing so serving humanity?

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By Maysa Jalbout
Today, more than ever, we are in urgent need for universities to lead the charge in thinking much more openly, creatively, and ambitiously about the challenges we face in local communities and across the planet.
Given the urgency, scale, and magnitude of the challenges we face—unprecedented numbers of refugees across the globe, persistent income inequality, and devastating loss of fertile land at the same time as exponential technological developments posing radical changes and threats to everything from our jobs to our security to our very own humanity—universities are best positioned to address them.
However, higher education institutions—including governments, businesses, and philanthropic entities that invest in them—have not always worked together with the urgency and clarity of purpose needed to serve humanity.
Funding models have pushed universities into adopting a mentality of scarcity, competing for a narrow pool of resources rather than favoring a mentality of abundance that would incentivize stretching for new goals and creating new opportunities.
And too many private and philanthropic investments in universities have focused on implementing incremental initiatives rather than on system-wide changes that would yield the best outcomes.
Going forward, we need to build new types of funding models and partnerships that reverse these counterproductive approaches. We need to focus on partnerships that further the urgency and clarity of purpose of serving humanity, incentivize a mentality of abundance, and seek big impact system-wide approaches. It is only when we deploy these approaches that we can drive toward three of the most critical shifts needed in higher education.
Shift #1: From universities investing in their reputation and financial security to investing in solving some of the most critical challenges of our time
Marketing and fundraising alone will not guarantee a university’s reputation and financial security.
Only a university that dedicates itself to solving pressing challenges will be assured the relevance and support of its community, and attract top talent, philanthropic money, and research funding.
As the adage says, “You are what you measure.” While not perfect, current impact reports are important in quantifying university contributions, mostly in economic terms. For example, Stanford University claims that its enterprises generate $2.7 trillion in annual revenues and over 5 million jobs, roughly equivalent to the 10th largest economy in the world.
Harvard claims that its living alumni have created over 146,000 for-profit and nonprofit ventures, over 20 million jobs, and annual revenues of $3.9 trillion—greater than the gross domestic product of Germany, the world’s fourth largest economy.
But impact is not limited to jobs and revenue.
Sometimes universities are best positioned to address the problems at their doorsteps. For decades, American University of Beirut’s (AUB) hospital and medical staff have been at the forefront of tending to the injured in Lebanon regardless of sect, origin, or financial ability. Carrying that kind of burden can only be understood by the unique location of a university like AUB, where urgent and immediate needs trump long-term, headline-grabbing initiatives.
Other universities build a niche for themselves working on the less visible challenges, like my own alma mater, McMaster University in Canada, which is quietly working on some of the most daunting health issues of our time. In a recent visit, I was struck by its extensive research to understand and address learning difficulties in the classroom—from the rise in autism, ADHD, and other special needs. CanChild’s research and inclusive education model is openly available online and will soon offer toolkits and trainings for communities around the world.
Many universities have impact ... By Maysa Jalbout
Today, more than ever, we are in urgent need for universities to lead the charge in thinking much more openly, creatively, and ambitiously about the challenges we face in local communities and across the planet.https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/01/17/shaming-students-is-keeping-schools-from-teaching-them/Shaming students is keeping schools from teaching themhttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/592606998/0/brookingsrss/topics/education~Shaming-students-is-keeping-schools-from-teaching-them/
Thu, 17 Jan 2019 15:26:23 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?p=558529

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By Andre M. Perry

At the start of the 2018-19 school year, every student at Mingus Union High School in Cottonwood, Ariz., was issued a color-coded ID badge. In the past, red badges denoted a student’s rank as an underclassman. Juniors and seniors wore gray badges. Beyond distinguishing between older and younger students, color coding provided a sense of progression, rank, and seniority. However, last year the school decided to take a different direction in categorizing students. Mingus Union forced academically underperforming students to carry a red badge—a virtual scarlet letter—to set them apart from the rest of their peers.

The shaming of her daughter didn’t sit well with the mom of one such upperclassman, Jordan Pickett. She had missed a lot of school due to a medical ailment and her grades suffered as a result. “It didn’t seem right,” Pickett’s mother told the Today show.

It isn’t right. Mingus Union reinforced an aspect of American culture that has educators believing they can teach students by punishing and shaming them. Shaming is the worst method of teaching, because it manipulates kids’ fear of alienation and stigma. It involves giving up on teaching students, and leaves them with only those lessons that can be learned from adult-sanctioned ridicule and mockery.

The use of negative reinforcement by marking and branding is more common in schools than you would think. Most of us know the archetypal image of a boy who has been punished, seated in a stool in a corner, wearing a cone hat with the word dunce on it or emblazoned with the letter “D.” That boy was made an example of, as the symbol of what not to be. Teachers shamed students with the dunce cap, which was used as late as the 1950s. Decades after the cap was phased out, everyone still knows what that image represents, showing just how entrenched the instinct to shame is in school.

“External shame, also referred to as stigma awareness, involves the fear of criticism and social rejection,” wrote Krystine I. Batcho in a Psychology Today article last year. Educators often leverage the fear of rejection and isolation to motivate students to change. Batcho explains that the fear of rejection is strong enough to lead to isolation, which is a powerful agent of behavioral control. Teachers know as much as anyone that social connectedness is essential to adolescents. Shaming is a manipulation of that importance in Mingus Union in an effort to improve students’ grades.

In the book “Hacking Classroom Culture,” authors Angela Stockman and Ellen Feig Gray show how ubiquitous shaming is. Feig Gray recounted how one of her teachers in high school history class shamed students in an attempt to garner greater involvement from the classroom. In front of the entire class, her teacher said, “Robert, we haven’t heard from you at all this semester. I think I’ll replace you with a potted plant!”

In a practice that seemingly inverted the shaming principle, teacher Roni Dean-Burren reflected in a blog post how her practice of giving students extra credit for bringing school supplies ended up shaming others whose families couldn’t afford them. “I realized I’d made a grave mistake,” Dean-Burren wrote. “These students didn’t have supplies because they couldn’t afford them. And because they or their families couldn’t afford them, I’d caused their grade to suffer.”

As a former board member of a charter school in New Orleans, I witnessed students wearing “Not Yet” signs—meaning, they had not yet met expectations—taped on their backs for not following the school’s behavioral policy. I also saw one of those students being made to walk up and down stairs for going against the mandated flow of foot-traffic. Shaming is often paired with harsh disciplinary policy and corporal punishment. None of these are positive means for lifting students up academically or behaviorally.

Educators who incorporate shame in their practice should be ashamed of themselves. Shaming actually works very well, but it runs the great risk of alienating students, moving the problem underground, and away from the supports a student needs to thrive. Students can become so ashamed that they become silent and removed. Bad academic habits can fester and behavioral issues worsen in the absence of authentic teaching. Shaming something away isn’t teaching.

Authentic teaching establishes relationships that empower students with the values and norms we want students to demonstrate outside of school. Shaming isn’t empowering. We should call shaming what it really is: bullying.

Pickett’s mother, Jennifer Lansman, told The Phoenix News Times that other students sneer at the red badges, saying that the kids who wear them “must be stupid, or they’re failures.”

What Mingus Union did was also remove the layer of privacy attached to grades. When most kids do badly on a test, no one knows but them, their teacher, and their parents. That allows a badly performing student to deal with the work of improving their grade, not pile on the stress of having classmates know about it. It’s no business of the other students what a classmate’s grades are.

The shaming policy may even have put Mingus Union afoul of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, commonly known as FERPA, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, both of which prohibit the release of personal information to the public. If students with disabilities score lower because of their disability, the red badge could have been seen as discriminating against them. The school may also have been in violation of the federal law by being “deliberately indifferent to discrimination (A.K.A. the school doesn’t care if its biased),” according the American Civil Liberties Union, which believes Mingus Union violated the ADA on both grounds. No wonder, then, that the ACLU got involved.

“The public display of student education records through the creation of ‘scarlet badges’ exemplifies the type of student privacy violation that spurred the passage of FERPA and must immediately cease,” wrote Kathleen Brody, legal director for the ACLU of Arizona, in a letter to the Mingus Union High School District superintendent on Dec. 28. Last week, Mingus Union reversed its policy, saying in a statement that “all students will now have the same color student ID’s, which is red for the school’s colors,” according to reporting by KAFF News.

Lawyers shouldn’t be the ones to teach teachers that a culture of shaming is holding back their students. And Mingus Union was not alone in abdicating responsibility for actually teaching students; the concept takes many forms in many educational institutions, and we need to eradicate it wherever it exists. If there is anything that needs to be singled out, it’s schools that bully students.

Update 1/17/19: This piece has been updated to include information that Mingus Union High School has rescinded the student ID badge policy.

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By Andre M. Perry
At the start of the 2018-19 school year, every student at Mingus Union High School in Cottonwood, Ariz., was issued a color-coded ID badge. In the past, red badges denoted a student’s rank as an underclassman. Juniors and seniors wore gray badges. Beyond distinguishing between older and younger students, color coding provided a sense of progression, rank, and seniority. However, last year the school decided to take a different direction in categorizing students. Mingus Union forced academically underperforming students to carry a red badge—a virtual scarlet letter—to set them apart from the rest of their peers.
The shaming of her daughter didn’t sit well with the mom of one such upperclassman, Jordan Pickett. She had missed a lot of school due to a medical ailment and her grades suffered as a result. “It didn’t seem right,” Pickett’s mother told the Today show.
It isn’t right. Mingus Union reinforced an aspect of American culture that has educators believing they can teach students by punishing and shaming them. Shaming is the worst method of teaching, because it manipulates kids’ fear of alienation and stigma. It involves giving up on teaching students, and leaves them with only those lessons that can be learned from adult-sanctioned ridicule and mockery.
The use of negative reinforcement by marking and branding is more common in schools than you would think. Most of us know the archetypal image of a boy who has been punished, seated in a stool in a corner, wearing a cone hat with the word dunce on it or emblazoned with the letter “D.” That boy was made an example of, as the symbol of what not to be. Teachers shamed students with the dunce cap, which was used as late as the 1950s. Decades after the cap was phased out, everyone still knows what that image represents, showing just how entrenched the instinct to shame is in school.
“External shame, also referred to as stigma awareness, involves the fear of criticism and social rejection,” wrote Krystine I. Batcho in a Psychology Today article last year. Educators often leverage the fear of rejection and isolation to motivate students to change. Batcho explains that the fear of rejection is strong enough to lead to isolation, which is a powerful agent of behavioral control. Teachers know as much as anyone that social connectedness is essential to adolescents. Shaming is a manipulation of that importance in Mingus Union in an effort to improve students’ grades.
In the book “Hacking Classroom Culture,” authors Angela Stockman and Ellen Feig Gray show how ubiquitous shaming is. Feig Gray recounted how one of her teachers in high school history class shamed students in an attempt to garner greater involvement from the classroom. In front of the entire class, her teacher said, “Robert, we haven’t heard from you at all this semester. I think I’ll replace you with a potted plant!”
In a practice that seemingly inverted the shaming principle, teacher Roni Dean-Burren reflected in a blog post how her practice of giving students extra credit for bringing school supplies ended up shaming others whose families couldn’t afford them. “I realized I’d made a grave mistake,” Dean-Burren wrote. “These students didn’t have supplies because they couldn’t afford them. And because they or their families couldn’t afford them, I’d caused their grade to suffer.”
As a former board member of a charter school in New Orleans, I witnessed students wearing “Not Yet” signs—meaning, they had not yet met expectations—taped on their backs for not following the school’s behavioral policy. I also saw one of those students being made to walk up and down stairs for going against the mandated flow of foot-traffic. Shaming is ... By Andre M. Perry
At the start of the 2018-19 school year, every student at Mingus Union High School in Cottonwood, Ariz., was issued a color-coded ID badge. In the past, red badges denoted a student’s rank as an underclassman.https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2019/01/15/equal-opportunity-in-american-education/Equal opportunity in American educationhttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/592258236/0/brookingsrss/topics/education~Equal-opportunity-in-American-education/
Tue, 15 Jan 2019 22:22:09 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?p=558070

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By Dick Startz

Today would have been Dr. Martin Luther King’s 90th birthday had he not been taken from us in 1968. Whatever position one takes on how to deal with America’s racial issues, most people of goodwill ascribe to the idea of equality of opportunity in education. I want to look today at a number of indicators of educational opportunity.

I emphasize educational opportunity, as distinct from educational outcome. Outcomes depend on opportunities offered by schools, on backgrounds that students bring through the school room door with them, and on choices made by those students. I will begin by reviewing a bit of what is known about differences in outcomes, in part because some differences by race are shockingly large. But let me be frank about why I will largely focus on equality of opportunity: There remain a number of people who want to blame the disadvantaged for their situation, and who do so increasingly openly. Consequently, I think it is important to identify circumstances where disadvantage cannot be attributed to the disadvantaged.

I wish to note three background items before we begin. First, the Equality of Opportunity project, led by a team of scholars at Harvard University, offers a wealth of data and analysis on inequality along many dimensions. Second, ProPublica has a nice piece on disparities in outcomes written by Lena V. Groeger, Annie Waldman, and David Eads. Third, I am going to limit my analysis to black/white differentials rather than looking at all disadvantaged groups. Partially this is for simplicity and partially as a reminder of the struggles led by Dr. King. (Though I suspect Dr. King would not agree with my narrow focus.)

Large gaps in outcomes persist by race

Let’s begin with two quotes about findings from the Equality of Opportunity project, as discussed by Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren. First, “The black-white gap is not immutable: black boys who move to better neighborhoods as children have significantly better outcomes.” What’s more is that the researchers are explicit that “environmental conditions during childhood have causal effects on racial disparities, demonstrating that the black-white income gap is not immutable.” The focus here on the Brown Center Chalkboard is education, but as we move on please remember that the educational system is not the only place there are inequities. As Chetty and Hedren write, “In 99% of neighborhoods in the United States, black boys earn less in adulthood than white boys who grow up in families with comparable income.”

While schools are not all that matter, let’s talk about some of the ways that schools do matter. Here is a graphic from ProPublica showing the achievement gap between black and white students across the nation.

The big visual differences are in the South (still!), which is where Dr. King mostly fought. But the disparities are not just in the South. In LA Unified, the second largest school district in the nation, ProPublica reports, “Black students are, on average, academically 3.1 grades behind White students.” In Chicago, the gap is three grades. (ProPublica lets you check out your own local schools as well.)

Achievement gaps depend on opportunities inside school walls, and also on which groups end up being advantaged by those opportunities. ProPublica looked explicitly at racial gaps in participation in Advanced Placement and gifted programs. If a student isn’t enrolled in one of these programs, she or he can’t very well benefit from the program. Here’s the picture from ProPublica.

Again the South stands out, but, again, it’s not just the South. In NYC—the nation’s largest school district—white students are two-thirds more likely to be enrolled in AP courses than are black students.

Opportunity gaps underneath the outcome gaps

Still, one could argue that the differences in enrollment in these advanced opportunities reflects something that students bring into school rather than the opportunities that the schools make available. To nail the point that inequality of opportunity is an issue, I want to look at issues of availability. To be pointed, if a student attends a school that doesn’t even offer an AP course, it’s pretty clear that the gap issue is one of opportunity rather than student choice.

A central issue, of course, is that black and white students don’t attend the same schools. To a great extent, schools remain de facto separate. (For discussion, see Chalkboard posts here, here, here, and here.) The most recent Department of Education Office of Civil Rights data collection reports information from almost 25,000 high schools (defined for our purposes as schools including a 12th grade). About 15 percent of students are black, but 40 percent of black students are in majority-black schools, and only 24 percent of black students attend majority-white schools. There was a time when many thought “separate but equal” was viable. Are opportunities in our still largely separate schools now equal?

Only 36 percent of high schools where the majority of students are black offer a calculus course. In contrast, 60 percent of majority white schools offer calculus. It’s hard to see how this makes for equal opportunity.

As a practical matter, to take calculus in high school—assuming it’s available in your high school—it helps to have gotten a head start on earlier math courses. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights asks schools whether Algebra 1—normally a ninth grade course is available to seventh or eighth graders. This head-start offering is available in 42 percent of majority-black schools as compared to 66 percent of majority-white schools. An alternative comparison sounds not quite as bad (but still not good): 77 percent of white students are in schools offering early algebra while the corresponding number gets up to 64 percent for black students.

Perhaps I am hung up on the importance of math courses. After all, I am an economist, and in economics and other STEM fields, getting an early start on calculus before going to college is awfully valuable. But math isn’t everything. Let’s look at a couple of more general indicators.

The vast majority of teachers in the United States are certified. But schools that are disproportionately black have a noticeably disproportionate share of teachers who are not certified. Sometimes that’s intentional. Some uncertified teachers come through Teach for America or a school district academy and perform well. Of course, schools that receive Teach for America teachers are typically pretty disadvantaged in a variety of ways. So whether you think that uncertified teachers are less qualified or you just think that the presence of uncertified teachers is a signal that the school environment is more challenging than where you’d like to send your kids … well, neither is good. Here’s the figure showing the relation between the fraction of students in the school who are black and the fraction of teachers who are not certified. The relation between student race and teacher certification is quite clear.

It is a well-established fact that brand new teachers do not teach as well as teachers with more experience (on average, that is). Being a classroom teacher is just a very, very hard job that requires practice. Educational opportunities are therefore better for students assigned teachers who are not just starting off. Who is more likely to get a rookie teacher?

Here’s a figure showing the fraction of teachers in a school in their first year against the fraction of the students in the school who are black. Students in schools that are under 10 percent black have about 6 percent first-year teachers. In schools that are 90 percent or more black, that fraction doubles to almost 12 percent.

Equal opportunity still eludes us

We all know that educational outcomes—test scores, high school graduation, college attendance, school discipline, and so on—differ by race. Some part of those differences reflect what students bring to school. But the data above also shows that the opportunities offered black and white students have not yet become equal. Dr. King’s dream of equality of opportunity sadly remains, in the words of Langston Hughes, “a dream deferred.”

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By Dick Startz
Today would have been Dr. Martin Luther King’s 90th birthday had he not been taken from us in 1968. Whatever position one takes on how to deal with America’s racial issues, most people of goodwill ascribe to the idea of equality of opportunity in education. I want to look today at a number of indicators of educational opportunity.
I emphasize educational opportunity, as distinct from educational outcome. Outcomes depend on opportunities offered by schools, on backgrounds that students bring through the school room door with them, and on choices made by those students. I will begin by reviewing a bit of what is known about differences in outcomes, in part because some differences by race are shockingly large. But let me be frank about why I will largely focus on equality of opportunity: There remain a number of people who want to blame the disadvantaged for their situation, and who do so increasingly openly. Consequently, I think it is important to identify circumstances where disadvantage cannot be attributed to the disadvantaged.
I wish to note three background items before we begin. First, the Equality of Opportunity project, led by a team of scholars at Harvard University, offers a wealth of data and analysis on inequality along many dimensions. Second, ProPublica has a nice piece on disparities in outcomes written by Lena V. Groeger, Annie Waldman, and David Eads. Third, I am going to limit my analysis to black/white differentials rather than looking at all disadvantaged groups. Partially this is for simplicity and partially as a reminder of the struggles led by Dr. King. (Though I suspect Dr. King would not agree with my narrow focus.)
Large gaps in outcomes persist by race
Let’s begin with two quotes about findings from the Equality of Opportunity project, as discussed by Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren. First, “The black-white gap is not immutable: black boys who move to better neighborhoods as children have significantly better outcomes.” What’s more is that the researchers are explicit that “environmental conditions during childhood have causal effects on racial disparities, demonstrating that the black-white income gap is not immutable.” The focus here on the Brown Center Chalkboard is education, but as we move on please remember that the educational system is not the only place there are inequities. As Chetty and Hedren write, “In 99% of neighborhoods in the United States, black boys earn less in adulthood than white boys who grow up in families with comparable income.”
While schools are not all that matter, let’s talk about some of the ways that schools do matter. Here is a graphic from ProPublica showing the achievement gap between black and white students across the nation.
The big visual differences are in the South (still!), which is where Dr. King mostly fought. But the disparities are not just in the South. In LA Unified, the second largest school district in the nation, ProPublica reports, “Black students are, on average, academically 3.1 grades behind White students.” In Chicago, the gap is three grades. (ProPublica lets you check out your own local schools as well.)
Achievement gaps depend on opportunities inside school walls, and also on which groups end up being advantaged by those opportunities. ProPublica looked explicitly at racial gaps in participation in Advanced Placement and gifted programs. If a student isn’t enrolled in one of these programs, she or he can’t very well benefit from the program. Here’s the picture from ProPublica.
Again the South stands out, but, again, it’s not just the South. In NYC—the nation’s largest school district—white students are two-thirds more likely to be enrolled in AP courses than are black students.
Opportunity gaps underneath the outcome gaps
Still, one could argue that the differences in ... By Dick Startz
Today would have been Dr. Martin Luther King’s 90th birthday had he not been taken from us in 1968. Whatever position one takes on how to deal with America’s racial issues, most people of goodwill ascribe to the idea of ... https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2019/01/10/top-6-trends-in-higher-education/Top 6 trends in higher educationhttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/591542924/0/brookingsrss/topics/education~Top-trends-in-higher-education/
Thu, 10 Jan 2019 20:37:41 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?p=556890

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By Emal Dusst, Rebecca Winthrop

Around the world, tuition at universities is rising at a much faster rate than inflation and challenging students’ return on investment. Reduced government funding and higher operating costs are driving the need for change at universities. The mismatch in employer needs and employee skills is leaving over seven million jobs unfilled in the U.S.

These trends are opening the way for new approaches in higher education. Innovations in how post-secondary education are delivered, financed, and recognized are driven by a range of actors—from large public universities like Arizona State University to elite private institutions like MIT to the many relatively new education companies entering the sector like Make School,Coursera, and Trilogy Education.

But to understand why these new approaches are emerging, we need to first look at what is driving them. While there are many factors influencing the direction of post-secondary education around the world, three are particularly noteworthy for influencing recent innovation: reduced return on investment for students, reduced government spending, and significant skills mis-matches between graduates’ abilities and jobs available.

What’s driving innovation in higher education

One way students can evaluate whether to invest in higher education is through potential wage premiums—namely if what students would earn with their education is higher than what they would earn without it. An important element in understanding the return on investment of higher education is the cost of the degree.

The average wage premium in the EU and U.S. for those with a tertiary education is approximately 60 to 75 percent more than they could earn without the degree, while it is around 150 percent in some middle-income countries like Brazil and Chile. In the U.S., tuition prices have skyrocketed and the cost of an undergraduate degree is 13 times higher than it was 40 years ago. Tuition and fees have increased over 1,000 percent since the late 1970s and the increase in the cost of food and housing was less than a third of that.

Another aspect influencing recent innovations is the increase in tuition and fees, which stems from a mix of factors including reduced government funding and increased spending on amenities to attract students. In the U.S., for example, states cut funding deeply after the recession hit—spending 16 percent less per student in 2018 than in 2008. Universities are responding with cost cuts and seeking alternative revenue sources. For example, Purdue University has reduced its in-state student intake by approximately 4,000 over the last ten years—while increasing its out-of-state and international student intake by about 5,000—as these students pay higher tuition largely without the need of financial aid.

In addition to reduced funding, rising costs, and decreasing wage premiums in places like the U.S. and U.K., there is also the worry that what students learn at university will not necessarily give them the skills needed for the jobs available. This skills mis-match is particularly acute in fields like computer science where real-world practice easily outpaces academic curricula. By 2020, one million computer science-related jobs will go unfilled, and many computer science programs at universities are outdated. In the words of one Make School college student attending its innovative tech program after taking computer science classes from the elite public university where he received a B.A., “my university courses taught me all about the theory of computer science, but I couldn’t actually code.”

There are currently seven million job openings and over 6.3 million job seekers in the U.S., and the acceleration of the digital economy and the rise of automation is only exacerbating this worker shortage. Of the job openings mentioned, 1.2 million or 17 percent are in the healthcare sector, highlighting a continued shortage of nurses in the U.S. According to a recent study by McKinsey, this sector is the only one in which “the need for physical and manual skills will grow in the years leading to 2030.”

These major shifts in higher education are opening opportunities for new approaches and new actors to help support post-secondary learning and skill development. There are six trends that are particularly notable.

1. Online education has become an increasingly accepted option, especially when “stackable” into degrees.
Enrollment in online courses has more than quadrupled in the last 15 years in the U.S. While not as explosive in other countries, online options are gaining traction around the world. Given the increased cost of higher education, online programs are offering not just increased flexibility, but also a major reduction in cost. Coursera offers a fully online master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in computer and information technology for one-third the cost of the on-campus version. Several programs are also allowing students to “test” degrees by taking courses that can eventually be “stacked” into a degree, thus lowering their risk. MIT now offers a supply chain management degree with a portion of the curriculum online through edX before students enter the on-campus program. Arizona State University allows students to take the first year online as part of the Global Freshman Academy. In both programs, students complete a portion of the degree online and then apply for the on-campus, full degree at a fraction of the price.

2. Competency-based education (CBE) lowers costs and reduces completion time for students.
There is an increase in CBE, which allows students to apply their work and life experience to their education. These degree programs tend to be less expensive, self-paced, and more career-oriented. If students—either through workplace training, outside reading, or purely life experience—happen to have the competence and knowledge required for a particular subject, they can take the test and get credit without having to take a class. Title IV funding (financial aid) is available for some of these programs, which includes the University of Wisconsin and Southern New Hampshire University, a sign that the U.S. Department of Education recognizes their importance. In previous discussions, the global strategy company Parthenon estimated that more than 600 institutions are either exploring or have launched CBE programs, with double-digit growth expected annually from 2013 to 2020. It is too early to predict the efficacy of these programs, but their popularity with students and employers continues to rise.

3. Income Share Agreements (ISAs) help students reduce the risk associated with student loans.
In the U.S., the private sector is improving the student loan dilemma for students with ISAs. Countries like Australia have government-run agreements—where students don’t pay back their loans until they get a job and meet certain income thresholds—but currently, private companies provide ISA options in the U.S. Vemo Education works with universities and skills-providers to establish these agreements. Institutions can also make direct offerings, such as at the previously mentioned Make School, which provides a newly accredited applied computer science degree designed to take two to three years. This requires students to pay back 20 percent of their income for the first five years of employment, and if they don’t find a job, they aren’t responsible for payments. Institutions share the risk with the students, and in this particular program, are held accountable for student outcomes.

4. Online Program Manager (OPM) organizations benefit both universities and nontraditional, working-adult students.
OPMs help traditional universities build and maintain their online degree or program offerings, while opening new and flexible options to nontraditional students. Generally, through a revenue share model, the university provides the content, while the OPM primarily puts it online and leads the marketing efforts. The leader in this market is 2U, which, for example, partners with the University of North Carolina to deliver an online master’s degree in public health. Another smaller but fast-growing player in this market, which according to Eduventures, is expected to reach $2.5 billion by 2020, is Coursera, which works with the University of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and HEC Paris, among others. Companies like Trilogy Education partner with top universities to deliver in-person skills training on-campus in fields such as coding and cybersecurity. Other companies like Orbis Education partner with universities to help bridge the healthcare provider shortage through a hybrid approach to pre-licensure healthcare programs, while ExecOnline partners with top business schools to deliver executive leadership courses online.

5. Enterprise training companies are filling the skills gap by working directly with employers.
Given the massive mismatch in employer needs and worker skills, there are many companies working with corporations to ensure employees are rightfully skilled. Trilogy Education not only partners with universities, as mentioned above, but also leverages its network of partners and its platform to help companies bridge their own tech-talent gaps in both hiring and training. One of the more successful models has been Pluralsight, which is an online platform for IT and software developer training. Its focused, industry-updated content, and close ties to employers are key success factors. A unique model to address this mismatch is Revature’s platform, which utilizes university partnerships and close collaboration with employers to deliver a program where students pay their tuition over a two-year period after they are employed.

6. Pathway programs facilitate increasing transnational education, which serves as an additional revenue stream for universities.
The brightest students around the world that can afford to study abroad are increasingly embarking on journeys overseas, primarily to the U.S., U.K., and Australia. According to Studyportals, the number of internationally mobile students is expected to increase from 4.5 million in 2015 to nearly seven million in 2030. International students are increasingly attractive to universities, as they allow expanded reach and programs offered at different price points. Students from China, India, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea account for more than 50 percent of students who go abroad to earn their degree, with China as the largest source. The U.S. has seen a recent decline in its growth of international students, which some link to stricter immigration policies, but student flows are expected to increase globally. Pathway programs, which are a small but fast-growing segment of the transnational education market, help foreign students get admission into U.S. institutions through bridging academic entry standards. Companies such as the U.K.-based Study Group and U.S.-based Shorelight partner with universities to set up these programs and use revenue share models, providing an additional revenue source for universities. Most of these programs are in countries that have been traditional draws for higher education like the U.S., but some are now also in countries like China that traditionally send many students overseas.

There will undoubtedly be on-going opportunities for new approaches and actors to innovate in higher education as the sector continues to face high costs, decreasing returns on investment, and skills mis-matches. Watching these six trends and how they develop over time will be interesting. It is unlikely that they will reverse course anytime soon.

Emal Dusst, a Robert S. Brookings Society member, serves on several education-related boards, including Coursera (observer) and American University of Afghanistan. Dusst was vice president, strategy and chief of staff to the CEO at Laureate Education, a B Corp and the largest international network of degree-granting higher education institutions. Dusst has a Bachelor’s in economics from UCLA and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. As a Robert S. Brookings Society member, Dusst provides financial support to the Brookings Institution. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the authors and the content adheres to Brookings’s commitment to quality, independence, and impact.

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By Emal Dusst, Rebecca Winthrop
Around the world, tuition at universities is rising at a much faster rate than inflation and challenging students’ return on investment. Reduced government funding and higher operating costs are driving the need for change at universities. The mismatch in employer needs and employee skills is leaving over seven million jobs unfilled in the U.S.
These trends are opening the way for new approaches in higher education. Innovations in how post-secondary education are delivered, financed, and recognized are driven by a range of actors—from large public universities like Arizona State University to elite private institutions like MIT to the many relatively new education companies entering the sector like Make School, Coursera, and Trilogy Education.
But to understand why these new approaches are emerging, we need to first look at what is driving them. While there are many factors influencing the direction of post-secondary education around the world, three are particularly noteworthy for influencing recent innovation: reduced return on investment for students, reduced government spending, and significant skills mis-matches between graduates’ abilities and jobs available.
What’s driving innovation in higher education
One way students can evaluate whether to invest in higher education is through potential wage premiums—namely if what students would earn with their education is higher than what they would earn without it. An important element in understanding the return on investment of higher education is the cost of the degree.
The average wage premium in the EU and U.S. for those with a tertiary education is approximately 60 to 75 percent more than they could earn without the degree, while it is around 150 percent in some middle-income countries like Brazil and Chile. In the U.S., tuition prices have skyrocketed and the cost of an undergraduate degree is 13 times higher than it was 40 years ago. Tuition and fees have increased over 1,000 percent since the late 1970s and the increase in the cost of food and housing was less than a third of that.
Another aspect influencing recent innovations is the increase in tuition and fees, which stems from a mix of factors including reduced government funding and increased spending on amenities to attract students. In the U.S., for example, states cut funding deeply after the recession hit—spending 16 percent less per student in 2018 than in 2008. Universities are responding with cost cuts and seeking alternative revenue sources. For example, Purdue University has reduced its in-state student intake by approximately 4,000 over the last ten years—while increasing its out-of-state and international student intake by about 5,000—as these students pay higher tuition largely without the need of financial aid.
In addition to reduced funding, rising costs, and decreasing wage premiums in places like the U.S. and U.K., there is also the worry that what students learn at university will not necessarily give them the skills needed for the jobs available. This skills mis-match is particularly acute in fields like computer science where real-world practice easily outpaces academic curricula. By 2020, one million computer science-related jobs will go unfilled, and many computer science programs at universities are outdated. In the words of one Make School college student attending its innovative tech program after taking computer science classes from the elite public university where he received a B.A., “my university courses taught me all about the theory of computer science, but I couldn’t actually code.”
There are currently seven million job openings and over 6.3 million job seekers in the U.S., and the acceleration of the digital economy and the rise of automation is only exacerbating this worker shortage. Of the job openings mentioned, 1.2 million or 17 percent are in the ... By Emal Dusst, Rebecca Winthrop
Around the world, tuition at universities is rising at a much faster rate than inflation and challenging students’ return on investment. Reduced government funding and higher operating costs are driving the ... https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2019/01/09/congress-may-now-have-historic-female-representation-but-women-in-leadership-still-have-a-long-way-to-go/Congress may now have historic female representation, but women in leadership still have a long way to gohttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/591369368/0/brookingsrss/topics/education~Congress-may-now-have-historic-female-representation-but-women-in-leadership-still-have-a-long-way-to-go/
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 21:25:22 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?p=556656

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By Christina Kwauk

Last week, the 116th U.S. Congress was sworn in. Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, the country has much to celebrate in its historic increase in representation by women, from 19 percent in 2017 to 24 percent in 2019, lifting us—finally—to the world average (24 percent) of women in national parliaments or congressional bodies. Ongoing discussions in the media about the social and political significance of these women leaders remind me of a conversation that I had just days after the midterm elections last November with Julia Gillard, former prime minister of Australia and distinguished fellow at Brookings, and Adrianna Pita, host of the Brookings Intersections podcast. We talked about women’s leadership and girls’ education and their doubly important role in the fight toward gender equality.

Here are four takeaways from our conversation that are important to remember as we shift from raising our glasses in celebration of the new class of congresswomen in the U.S. to pushing up our sleeves and getting back to the work needed to achieve gender equality.

1. We need more evidence of what works to advance women leaders—how, where, and why.

The outcomes of the 2018 midterm elections in the U.S. demonstrate how vital girls’ and women’s leadership programs and initiatives, like those led by Emily’s List, VoteRunLead, Rise Up, and WEDO, are to removing barriers, creating role models, and catapulting girls and women into leadership positions. But equally important are institutions like the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, launched by Julia just last year, which disseminates knowledge for action on the best practices in women’s leadership development. Yet, importantly, what works to advance women leaders in high-income countries may not work in low- or middle-income countries or in areas of conflict and crisis. Additional factors like economic instability, high unemployment, heightened gender-based violence, a lack of basic needs like safe shelter, or sociocultural barriers to accessing financial, material, or human resource capital can create further challenges, especially for women. In generating evidence on what works, how, where, and why, we must also prioritize cross-cultural conversations among women from all regions of the world.

2. We need better policies, comprehensive services, and mindset change to reduce barriers for women in the home, the workplace, and en route to positions of leadership.

The opening of a new daycare center for U.S. House of Representative staff with children added more news to celebrate last week. But such signs of progress must not release pressure on policymakers and decisionmakers from addressing the host of workplace inequities that perpetuate discriminatory gender norms, including lack of family leave (encompassing maternity, paternity, and elder care), unequal pay for equal work, or gaps in labor laws that leave women vulnerable to sexual harassment. Equally important, inequities in the workplace that begin in the home and in communities must also be addressed: from the unequal distribution of domestic and child care responsibilities to the gender stratification of physical spaces of power and decisionmaking. We have much to learn from organizations big and small around the world that are generating best practices and frameworks for stimulating community mindset change around gender norms.

3. We need to direct attention and resources toward building a pipeline of women leaders, starting with girls.

Studies have shown that formal education is an important enabling factor for women’s and girls’ leadership. In the U.S., girls’ education may not be a barrier. But around the world, we have collectively allowed more than 130 million girls of primary and secondary school-age to fall out of the education system in low- and middle-income countries and in areas with conflict, crisis, and displacement. To accelerate change needed to normalize women leaders around the world, we must begin by investing in the education of girls. However, this doesn’t mean giving girls just any kind of education, but a quality education that is empowering and transformative. This will require countries to critically examine whether their education systems, including the curriculum, are gender-responsive and rights-based, and have breadth of learning opportunities to develop both the technical and socio-emotional skills needed for career climbing, as well as leading innovation.

4. We need to make girls’ and women’s leadership an issue for both women and men, girls and boys.

It’s easy to pin gender equality as a girls’ or women’s issue. But as long as this is the case, we can expect the global gender gap in political empowerment (as well as in health, education, and economic empowerment) to close in another 100 years, at best. It’s obvious that we don’t have time to wait this long, nor does our planet. In Julia’s words, “we’re only going to see the profound change we want to if this is a journey for women and men, which means it needs to start with understandings by boys and girls that this should be a gender-equal world.” There is much to be said about the importance of fostering male allies to dismantle gender inequality—this is especially the case in U.S. politics today. At a global level, male allies are vitally important for micro-level norm changes that can have tremendous collective impact. Of course there is power in millions of women joining hands in protest against gender discrimination, but it is in boys’ and men’s understanding of gender justice that together we can transform a hammer and chisel into a bulldozer against the barriers facing girls and women.

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By Christina Kwauk
Last week, the 116th U.S. Congress was sworn in. Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, the country has much to celebrate in its historic increase in representation by women, from 19 percent in 2017 to 24 percent in 2019, lifting us—finally—to the world average (24 percent) of women in national parliaments or congressional bodies. Ongoing discussions in the media about the social and political significance of these women leaders remind me of a conversation that I had just days after the midterm elections last November with Julia Gillard, former prime minister of Australia and distinguished fellow at Brookings, and Adrianna Pita, host of the Brookings Intersections podcast. We talked about women’s leadership and girls’ education and their doubly important role in the fight toward gender equality.
Here are four takeaways from our conversation that are important to remember as we shift from raising our glasses in celebration of the new class of congresswomen in the U.S. to pushing up our sleeves and getting back to the work needed to achieve gender equality.
1. We need more evidence of what works to advance women leaders—how, where, and why.
The outcomes of the 2018 midterm elections in the U.S. demonstrate how vital girls’ and women’s leadership programs and initiatives, like those led by Emily’s List, VoteRunLead, Rise Up, and WEDO, are to removing barriers, creating role models, and catapulting girls and women into leadership positions. But equally important are institutions like the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, launched by Julia just last year, which disseminates knowledge for action on the best practices in women’s leadership development. Yet, importantly, what works to advance women leaders in high-income countries may not work in low- or middle-income countries or in areas of conflict and crisis. Additional factors like economic instability, high unemployment, heightened gender-based violence, a lack of basic needs like safe shelter, or sociocultural barriers to accessing financial, material, or human resource capital can create further challenges, especially for women. In generating evidence on what works, how, where, and why, we must also prioritize cross-cultural conversations among women from all regions of the world.
2. We need better policies, comprehensive services, and mindset change to reduce barriers for women in the home, the workplace, and en route to positions of leadership.
The opening of a new daycare center for U.S. House of Representative staff with children added more news to celebrate last week. But such signs of progress must not release pressure on policymakers and decisionmakers from addressing the host of workplace inequities that perpetuate discriminatory gender norms, including lack of family leave (encompassing maternity, paternity, and elder care), unequal pay for equal work, or gaps in labor laws that leave women vulnerable to sexual harassment. Equally important, inequities in the workplace that begin in the home and in communities must also be addressed: from the unequal distribution of domestic and child care responsibilities to the gender stratification of physical spaces of power and decisionmaking. We have much to learn from organizations big and small around the world that are generating best practices and frameworks for stimulating community mindset change around gender norms.
3. We need to direct attention and resources toward building a pipeline of women leaders, starting with girls.
Studies have shown that formal education is an important enabling factor for women’s and girls’ leadership. In the U.S., girls’ education may not be a barrier. But around the world, we have collectively allowed more than 130 million girls of primary and secondary school-age to fall out of the education system in low- and middle-income ... By Christina Kwauk
Last week, the 116th U.S. Congress was sworn in. Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, the country has much to celebrate in its historic increase in representation by women, from 19 percent in 2017 to 24 percent ... https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2019/01/02/a-global-snapshot-impact-bonds-in-2018/A global snapshot: Impact bonds in 2018http://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/590218914/0/brookingsrss/topics/education~A-global-snapshot-Impact-bonds-in/
Wed, 02 Jan 2019 15:46:33 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?p=555438

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By Izzy Boggild-Jones, Emily Gustafsson-Wright

2018 was an eventful year for the impact bond market. The number of contracted impact bonds continued to grow: As of January 1, 2019, the Brookings Global Impact Bond Database tracked 134 impact bonds as either completed or in implementation, up from 110 last year. Understanding the potential value of impact bonds as an innovative financing mechanism depends on several key factors. Below we provide a global snapshot of the impact bonds landscape from the past year and forecast the pivotal role of data in supporting the growth of outcome-based contracting in 2019.

What does the impact bond market look like?

Most of these contracts are still social impact bonds (SIBs), where the outcome funder is the government—there are just seven development impact bonds (DIBs), with third-party funders paying for outcomes. Social welfare and employment remain the most popular sectors for impact bonds, together making up 69 percent of contracts. While 27 countries have now contracted impact bonds, over a third of the contracts are in the U.K., with just one or two contracts signed in most other countries. Further details from the database can be found in our Impact Bonds Snapshot: January 2019.

Fewer contracts were signed in 2018 than 2017, with just 24 new impact bonds contracted, down from 34 in 2017. New contracts this year were split fairly evenly between social welfare (9), employment (6), health (5), and education (4). Most of these contracts were in high-income countries; however we saw four new contracts across low- and middle-income countries. Cameroon launched a DIB for cataract patients, while India launched its third DIB to date—the Quality Education India DIB—with three service providers offering different interventions to improve learning outcomes. South Africa launched two SIBs, one for youth employment, and another for early childhood development.

Are impact bonds a success?

At least once a week people ask us to weigh in on whether impact bonds are successful. In our view, the answer to this question is not a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Instead, we think about it in terms of five potential measures of success. The first measure of success is simply: Is there a demand for impact bonds or outcome-based contracting? Second, do impact bonds reach the populations in need? And third, do the contracts achieve outcomes (and are investors receiving positive returns)? A fourth measure of success considers whether impact bonds are achieving something besides outcomes: In other words, what effects might this contracting mechanism have on the wider ecosystem? Finally, are the deals efficient?

While the majority of impact bonds are still in the implementation phase, an increasing number of the early deals are ending, which allows us to answer some of these questions. More than a quarter of the 134 contracts have now completed, and there is a growing body of evidence on the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from the first cohort of deals.

As described above, the impact bond market is growing steadily and has spread across many regions. But what should this be benchmarked against to measure success? In terms of upfront capital commitment, the impact bond market remains small at about $370 million invested to date (over eight years) compared to the $228 billion in impact assets under management in 2018.

2018 marked the final year of the Educate Girls DIB, the first education impact bond in a low- or middle-income country, which we have followed closely since its launch in 2015. The evaluation by IDinsight found that Educate Girls, the service provider, was able to enroll 768 out-of-school girls, and to achieve learning outcomes that were 160 percent of the final target.

We will focus on tracking the success of impact bonds around the world, across a range of criteria, in the coming months. It is important to note the continued difficulty in isolating the “impact bond effect”—that is whether using the impact bond financing mechanism actually adds value. Even for impact bonds where rigorous evaluations were used to measure outcomes, only the effectiveness of the intervention itself was captured, so we don’t know if the same results could have been achieved with input-based financing, traditional payment by results, or even just providing cash with no strings attached.

Data needs for achieving outcomes

One of the key observations from our study of the global impact bond market is the role of data, and the need for service providers to be able to gather, analyze, and respond to information to achieve outcomes. Through our conversations with impact bond actors around the world, we know that intermediaries and investors are often closely engaged with service providers, supporting the design and implementation of improved systems of performance management. If impact bonds are to increase in scale—for example through the ambitious Education Outcome Funds for India, or for Africa and the Middle East—the demand for timely, usable data, and the systems that support their use, will continue to grow. We are interested in how technology, and in particular tech tools and platforms for data collection, can help support outcome-based contracting to ensure that implementers can make informed decisions and improve their practice. In 2019, we will further research the availability of tech tools for data-informed decisionmaking in outcome-based financing, and the characteristics that facilitate their use.

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https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/CUE_Indonesia_classroom_001.jpg?w=259By Izzy Boggild-Jones, Emily Gustafsson-Wright
2018 was an eventful year for the impact bond market. The number of contracted impact bonds continued to grow: As of January 1, 2019, the Brookings Global Impact Bond Database tracked 134 impact bonds as either completed or in implementation, up from 110 last year. Understanding the potential value of impact bonds as an innovative financing mechanism depends on several key factors. Below we provide a global snapshot of the impact bonds landscape from the past year and forecast the pivotal role of data in supporting the growth of outcome-based contracting in 2019.
What does the impact bond market look like?
Most of these contracts are still social impact bonds (SIBs), where the outcome funder is the government—there are just seven development impact bonds (DIBs), with third-party funders paying for outcomes. Social welfare and employment remain the most popular sectors for impact bonds, together making up 69 percent of contracts. While 27 countries have now contracted impact bonds, over a third of the contracts are in the U.K., with just one or two contracts signed in most other countries. Further details from the database can be found in our Impact Bonds Snapshot: January 2019.
Fewer contracts were signed in 2018 than 2017, with just 24 new impact bonds contracted, down from 34 in 2017. New contracts this year were split fairly evenly between social welfare (9), employment (6), health (5), and education (4). Most of these contracts were in high-income countries; however we saw four new contracts across low- and middle-income countries. Cameroon launched a DIB for cataract patients, while India launched its third DIB to date—the Quality Education India DIB—with three service providers offering different interventions to improve learning outcomes. South Africa launched two SIBs, one for youth employment, and another for early childhood development.
Are impact bonds a success?
At least once a week people ask us to weigh in on whether impact bonds are successful. In our view, the answer to this question is not a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Instead, we think about it in terms of five potential measures of success. The first measure of success is simply: Is there a demand for impact bonds or outcome-based contracting? Second, do impact bonds reach the populations in need? And third, do the contracts achieve outcomes (and are investors receiving positive returns)? A fourth measure of success considers whether impact bonds are achieving something besides outcomes: In other words, what effects might this contracting mechanism have on the wider ecosystem? Finally, are the deals efficient?
While the majority of impact bonds are still in the implementation phase, an increasing number of the early deals are ending, which allows us to answer some of these questions. More than a quarter of the 134 contracts have now completed, and there is a growing body of evidence on the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from the first cohort of deals.
As described above, the impact bond market is growing steadily and has spread across many regions. But what should this be benchmarked against to measure success? In terms of upfront capital commitment, the impact bond market remains small at about $370 million invested to date (over eight years) compared to the $228 billion in impact assets under management in 2018.
From the available data on the completed deals, we know that most have repaid investors their principal plus positive returns, and that just one–the NYC Able Project for Incarcerated Youth–made no outcome payments. Most of the completed deals so far have been in the U.K., where a range of process and impact evaluations have been published.
2018 marked the final year of the Educate Girls DIB, the first education impact bond in a low- or middle-income country, which we have followed closely since its launch in ... By Izzy Boggild-Jones, Emily Gustafsson-Wright
2018 was an eventful year for the impact bond market. The number of contracted impact bonds continued to grow: As of January 1, 2019, the Brookings Global Impact Bond Database tracked 134 impact bonds ... https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/12/29/congress-in-2019-democrat-led-house-oversight-is-likely-in-store-for-devos/Congress in 2019: Democrat-led House oversight is likely in store for DeVoshttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/589687396/0/brookingsrss/topics/education~Congress-in-Democratled-House-oversight-is-likely-in-store-for-DeVos/
Sat, 29 Dec 2018 16:00:40 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?p=554381

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By Elizabeth Mann

In the past two years, with Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ leadership, the department has taken a number of steps to roll back federal regulations, in lockstep with the Trump administration’s broader playbook. As a result, during the midterm elections, Ms. DeVos was an easy and often-invoked target for Democrats. Although Democrats took control of the House, with the Senate and White House still under Republican control, it seems unlikely that there will be much in the way of legislation that undermines or changes policies implemented by DeVos.

Nonetheless, with control of committee chairs in the House, Democrats could make life difficult for DeVos starting in 2019. Indeed, several incoming chairs have signaled plans to use their oversight authority to examine DeVos’ policies. What might we see in the way of congressional oversight of education during the 116th Congress?

To begin, it’s important to underscore what oversight authority entails. Committee chairs in the House, in general, have the authority to convene public oversight hearings, ask members of the current administration (among others) to provide public testimony, and subpoena related documents. Highly publicized hearings could build pressure on DeVos to change course or to moderate highly contentious proposals. One example of a policy under consideration that Democrats may target is the department’s proposed Title IX rule, which would create formal requirements for how colleges and universities handle sexual harassment and assault claims. Incoming chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Rep. Bobby Scott (Va.), referred to the proposed rule as a “damaging setback.”

In addition to hearings, committees can send letters to members of the administration recommending a course of action or requesting information. In the 116th Congress, with Democrats taking on the chairperson roles in House committees and subcommittees, committee letters may be more likely to contain critiques, requests for information, and/or recommendations for a change in direction than during the previous Congress. For example, a fall 2018 letter from then-chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), and then-chairman of the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), praised the Department of Education’s proposed rule to revise the process for repaying defrauded borrowers as “a responsible step forward.” In contrast, Rep. Scott issued a statement in summer 2018 describing the DeVos regulatory agenda, including plans to rewrite the borrower defense rule, as “ominous.” Democrats may also use these letters to set the agenda in a manner consistent with their party’s policy goals.

It’s also important to note limitations to oversight authority. Committee chairs, via hearings or other means, cannot formally compel Secretary DeVos (or other members of the administration) to implement policy changes. Of course, Congress can create or revise policies through legislation or threaten to withhold or disrupt funding, but with Republicans in control of the Senate and President Trump in the White House, these are not reliable avenues for House Democrats to check Secretary DeVos’ authority.

Nonetheless, we should expect House Democrats to exercise their oversight authority in the hopes of pressuring DeVos to change course. At the very least, with House members’ re-election never far on the horizon, Democrats may see value in going on the record to oppose DeVos via hearings, letters, or other means, a strategy the political scientist David Mayhew refers to as “position taking.”

Oversight hearings can also be a valuable agenda-setting mechanism whereby members of Congress bring issues to the foreground. Publicizing policy decisions and related debates may be particularly helpful in the context of education policy, considering that education does not typically rank high among the issues Americans are most concerned about (in a November 2018 Gallup survey, only 3 percent of respondents indicated that “education” is the most important problem the country faces). Public attention to an issue may be further amplified if the focus of a hearing converges with highly salient concerns or movements. For example, a hearing on the proposed Title IX rule may draw a great deal of attention in the context of the #metoo movement. Hearings related to oversight of the for-profit sector may dovetail with larger concerns about the cost of college and burdensome student debt, with broader implications for the health of the economy and strength of the workforce.

At the same time, pursuing oversight may draw critiques from Republicans of chasing political foes rather than legislating. In their approach to oversight, Democrats with an eye on 2020 may attempt a delicate balancing act that allows them to set the agenda, build pressure on DeVos, and score political points without playing into this narrative.

Already, incoming chairs of several committees have indicated an interest in oversight of DeVos’ policies. Rep. Scott has indicated his intent to examine whether the Department of Education is fulfilling its obligations to protect students’ civil rights. Under his leadership, the House Education and the Workforce committee may examine whether state plans to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act, No Child Left Behind’s successor, comply with the law; civil rights groups have argued that some of the plans do not live up to “core equity provisions of the law.” Scott may also look into the recent rollback of the Obama administration’s guidance regarding school discipline policies that disproportionally affect students of color.

In addition, DeVos’ rollback of regulations related to the for-profit college industry are of concern to a number of incoming Democratic committee and subcommittee chairs, including Scott, Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif. [Veterans’ Affairs Committee]), Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn. [Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee on Appropriations]), and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif. [Financial Services Committee]). In this context, it seems likely that DeVos and/or members of her department will be asked to testify about the proposal to rescind Obama-era gainful employment regulations as well as other policies related to student debt and the for-profit industry.

Significant pressure via oversight does not necessarily mean that DeVos will change course on any of these items. The Secretary has marched forward with implementing her and President Trump’s deregulatory agenda despite significant pushback thus far. Whether an increase in formal oversight pressures her to change direction remains to be seen, especially if the president continues to support her efforts publicly—praise that will firm up her support in the Senate. Nonetheless, with new authority in the House, Democrats will almost certainly try.

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https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/rtsvzfq.jpg?w=270By Elizabeth Mann
In the past two years, with Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ leadership, the department has taken a number of steps to roll back federal regulations, in lockstep with the Trump administration’s broader playbook. As a result, during the midterm elections, Ms. DeVos was an easy and often-invoked target for Democrats. Although Democrats took control of the House, with the Senate and White House still under Republican control, it seems unlikely that there will be much in the way of legislation that undermines or changes policies implemented by DeVos.
Nonetheless, with control of committee chairs in the House, Democrats could make life difficult for DeVos starting in 2019. Indeed, several incoming chairs have signaled plans to use their oversight authority to examine DeVos’ policies. What might we see in the way of congressional oversight of education during the 116th Congress?
To begin, it’s important to underscore what oversight authority entails. Committee chairs in the House, in general, have the authority to convene public oversight hearings, ask members of the current administration (among others) to provide public testimony, and subpoena related documents. Highly publicized hearings could build pressure on DeVos to change course or to moderate highly contentious proposals. One example of a policy under consideration that Democrats may target is the department’s proposed Title IX rule, which would create formal requirements for how colleges and universities handle sexual harassment and assault claims. Incoming chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Rep. Bobby Scott (Va.), referred to the proposed rule as a “damaging setback.”
In addition to hearings, committees can send letters to members of the administration recommending a course of action or requesting information. In the 116th Congress, with Democrats taking on the chairperson roles in House committees and subcommittees, committee letters may be more likely to contain critiques, requests for information, and/or recommendations for a change in direction than during the previous Congress. For example, a fall 2018 letter from then-chairwoman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), and then-chairman of the Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), praised the Department of Education’s proposed rule to revise the process for repaying defrauded borrowers as “a responsible step forward.” In contrast, Rep. Scott issued a statement in summer 2018 describing the DeVos regulatory agenda, including plans to rewrite the borrower defense rule, as “ominous.” Democrats may also use these letters to set the agenda in a manner consistent with their party’s policy goals.
It’s also important to note limitations to oversight authority. Committee chairs, via hearings or other means, cannot formally compel Secretary DeVos (or other members of the administration) to implement policy changes. Of course, Congress can create or revise policies through legislation or threaten to withhold or disrupt funding, but with Republicans in control of the Senate and President Trump in the White House, these are not reliable avenues for House Democrats to check Secretary DeVos’ authority.
Nonetheless, we should expect House Democrats to exercise their oversight authority in the hopes of pressuring DeVos to change course. At the very least, with House members’ re-election never far on the horizon, Democrats may see value in going on the record to oppose DeVos via hearings, letters, or other means, a strategy the political scientist David Mayhew refers to as “position taking.”
Oversight hearings can also be a valuable agenda-setting mechanism whereby members of Congress bring issues to the foreground. Publicizing policy decisions and related debates may be ... By Elizabeth Mann
In the past two years, with Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ leadership, the department has taken a number of steps to roll back federal regulations, in lockstep with the Trump administration’https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/12/21/school-safety-commissions-report-uses-tenuous-logic-to-walk-back-guidance-on-school-discipline/School Safety Commission’s report uses tenuous logic to walk back guidance on school disciplinehttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/588632496/0/brookingsrss/topics/education~School-Safety-Commission%e2%80%99s-report-uses-tenuous-logic-to-walk-back-guidance-on-school-discipline/
Fri, 21 Dec 2018 14:00:02 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?p=554431

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By Jon Valant, Michael Hansen

On Tuesday, the Federal Commission on School Safety released its report on how to prevent, mitigate, and recover from acts of violence in schools. President Trump established the commission in March, following the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

While the commission’s purported mission was to improve student safety amid a series of school shootings around the country, the commission’s most substantive action was to rescind a 2014 “Dear Colleague Letter” (DCL) from the Obama administration that sought to address racial disparities in student discipline. School suspension and expulsion rates differ sharply across racial and ethnic groups in United States, and many voices in education have raised concerns about harsh discipline practices toward students of color and their long-term effects. In essence, the DCL: (a) outlined federal law related to discrimination in student discipline; (b) described the investigative and enforcement authority of the departments of Education and Justice; and (c) gave recommendations on issues such as trainings for school staff, data collection, and alternative approaches to student discipline.

The relationship between school shootings and the DCL struck many in the education community as tenuous at best—with the report seeming like an opportunistic way to rescind a letter that has long bothered conservatives. In this post, we examine that relationship and what rescinding the letter means for addressing discipline disparities.

A link between school shootings and the Obama discipline guidance?

Chapter 8 of the commission’s report focuses on the DCL. It critiques the letter on legal grounds (e.g., its application of disparate impact legal theory) and principle (e.g., saying that it “offends basic principles of federalism and the need to preserve state and local control over education”). These critiques make for important topics of debate—for example, scholars have argued that the federal government’s primary role in education is to protect civil rights—but are tangential to the question of what this guidance has to do with school shootings.

On that question, the report’s basic argument seems to be that school and district leaders feel threatened by the possibility of federal investigation of their discipline practices, which has made them reluctant to discipline students (specifically, students of color) in the ways that would be most effective. It warns of a chilling effect that has prevented some students from being disciplined or reported, and of schools feeling pressure to adopt alternatives to suspensions and expulsions. The report provides little empirical evidence related to the effects of the DCL on student safety aside from anecdotes and survey responses. (In fairness, the challenges of studying student discipline have left this research literature relatively thin, even as research emerges on topics such as discriminatory discipline practices and the effects of student suspensions.)

While the report does not explicitly make this connection, Sen. Marco Rubio and others have suggested that the DCL played a role in the Parkland shooting, as the shooter was apparently served poorly, if at all, by a Broward County program intended to decriminalize student misbehavior.

Notably, the purpose of the DCL is to address racial disparities and discrimination in student discipline, motivated by concern about the high rates at which students of color are suspended and expelled from school. The Parkland shooter, like the majority of shooters whose race is identified in the Washington Post database of school shootings, is white. (The shooter’s race is not available for about half of the observations in that database.)

In fact, relative to other acts of violence in schools, homicides in schools are an outlier in that most homicides occur in schools that are majority-white. To explore this, we collected data on violent incidents in schools as reported in the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). The CRDC reports on schools’ responses to questions about the types of incidents that occurred on their campuses during the 2015-16 school year. The dataset contains information about school demographics, which enables users to examine the relationship between school demographics and the incidence of violent events in schools.

In general, the concentration of white students in the schools where these violent offenses occur hovers around 40 percent. The most notable outlier is homicides. On average, these schools are 62 percent white. At schools where shootings took place (regardless of injury), schools were an average of 44 percent white.

The commission’s rationale for rescinding the DCL might be that schools have made across-the-board changes to their discipline practices that have left them vulnerable to more shootings and homicides. However, it bears noting that school shooters are not predominantly students of color, and that schools’ efforts to eliminate racial disparities in their suspension and expulsion rates do not have immediately clear implications for the occurrence of school homicides.

The road ahead with addressing discipline disparities

The rescission of the DCL is a setback for efforts to eliminate discipline disparities and stem the “school-to-prison pipeline”—one that too quickly ushers kids into the criminal justice system and too reluctantly addresses the causes of student misbehavior. However, we should be clear on how, and to what extent, it is a setback.

Nothing in the commission’s report prevents school and district leaders from working to address discipline disparities that concern them. Nothing prohibits the use of alternate forms of student discipline intended to be more restorative and less exclusionary than suspension and expulsion. (In fact, the report was generally supportive of the idea of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports.) The federal government still has a responsibility to enforce civil rights law, and students, parents, and school officials still have avenues available to them if they suspect discriminatory treatment.

What has been lost, through this report and other Trump administration decisions, is a sense that the federal government fully appreciates its role in protecting students’ civil rights and is committed to preventing violations of those rights. While the report laments that school and district leaders are worrying about discipline disparities and possible federal intervention, one can take the opposite view—that the DCL drew attention to an important issue, and that making people in schools aware of the consequences of violating federal law isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Finally, we would be remiss not to state the obvious about this report: that seeing a federal report about how to prevent school shootings that is virtually silent on the topic of guns is sobering. However the DCL might have contributed to the incidence of school shootings—a connection the report fails to make persuasively—it is hard to digest that a report like this could place more emphasis on rescinding guidance on discipline disparities than addressing shortcomings in gun laws.

Francesca Royal contributed to this post.

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https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/trump-devos-bedminster.jpg?w=270By Jon Valant, Michael Hansen
On Tuesday, the Federal Commission on School Safety released its report on how to prevent, mitigate, and recover from acts of violence in schools. President Trump established the commission in March, following the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
While the commission’s purported mission was to improve student safety amid a series of school shootings around the country, the commission’s most substantive action was to rescind a 2014 “Dear Colleague Letter” (DCL) from the Obama administration that sought to address racial disparities in student discipline. School suspension and expulsion rates differ sharply across racial and ethnic groups in United States, and many voices in education have raised concerns about harsh discipline practices toward students of color and their long-term effects. In essence, the DCL: (a) outlined federal law related to discrimination in student discipline; (b) described the investigative and enforcement authority of the departments of Education and Justice; and (c) gave recommendations on issues such as trainings for school staff, data collection, and alternative approaches to student discipline.
The relationship between school shootings and the DCL struck many in the education community as tenuous at best—with the report seeming like an opportunistic way to rescind a letter that has long bothered conservatives. In this post, we examine that relationship and what rescinding the letter means for addressing discipline disparities.
A link between school shootings and the Obama discipline guidance?
Chapter 8 of the commission’s report focuses on the DCL. It critiques the letter on legal grounds (e.g., its application of disparate impact legal theory) and principle (e.g., saying that it “offends basic principles of federalism and the need to preserve state and local control over education”). These critiques make for important topics of debate—for example, scholars have argued that the federal government’s primary role in education is to protect civil rights—but are tangential to the question of what this guidance has to do with school shootings.
On that question, the report’s basic argument seems to be that school and district leaders feel threatened by the possibility of federal investigation of their discipline practices, which has made them reluctant to discipline students (specifically, students of color) in the ways that would be most effective. It warns of a chilling effect that has prevented some students from being disciplined or reported, and of schools feeling pressure to adopt alternatives to suspensions and expulsions. The report provides little empirical evidence related to the effects of the DCL on student safety aside from anecdotes and survey responses. (In fairness, the challenges of studying student discipline have left this research literature relatively thin, even as research emerges on topics such as discriminatory discipline practices and the effects of student suspensions.)
While the report does not explicitly make this connection, Sen. Marco Rubio and others have suggested that the DCL played a role in the Parkland shooting, as the shooter was apparently served poorly, if at all, by a Broward County program intended to decriminalize student misbehavior.
Notably, the purpose of the DCL is to address racial disparities and discrimination in student discipline, motivated by concern about the high rates at which students of color are suspended and expelled from school. The Parkland shooter, like the majority of shooters whose race is identified in the Washington Post database of school shootings, is white. (The shooter’s race is not available for about half of the observations in that database.)
In fact, relative to other acts of violence in schools, homicides in schools are an outlier in that most ... By Jon Valant, Michael Hansen
On Tuesday, the Federal Commission on School Safety released its report on how to prevent, mitigate, and recover from acts of violence in schools. President Trump established the commission in March, following the ... https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/12/20/catalyzing-economic-growth-in-the-heartland-starts-with-research-universities/Catalyzing economic growth in the Heartland starts with research universitieshttp://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/588509416/0/brookingsrss/topics/education~Catalyzing-economic-growth-in-the-Heartland-starts-with-research-universities/
Thu, 20 Dec 2018 21:47:40 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?p=554369

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By Ross DeVol

How can the American Heartland raise the quality of its economic growth for its region and the nation? This was a core issue raised by the recent State of the Heartland: Factbook 2018 report, and the question continues to be raised in manyarticles.

No doubt it’s a tough question, but one promising strategy is clear, compelling, and ready to go: It involves better university engagement in commercializing research and supporting local businesses.

Research universities fulfill their mission by creating new knowledge and disseminating it. Universities achieve this by transferring human capital they develop and translating research to existing firms or startups via the commercialization process. Heartland universities hold their own in attracting federal research dollars, but more emphasis should be placed on securing industry-sponsored research and supporting faculty, staff and students in commercializing their intellectual property (IP).

In the 21st century, public and private research universities are the seed capital for creating knowledge that fosters scientific and technology-based economic development.

More universities need to think a bit more like Thomas Edison: He relied on a simple philosophy to guide research that led to world-changing inventions such as the first practical light bulb, the motion picture camera and an early version of the phonograph. “Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent,” said Edison. “Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.” This might be extreme for the nation’s public research universities, but instilling this mindset at universities throughout the Heartland could promote higher levels of business formation, successful scale-ups, and job creation.

This strategy rings true because research universities that engage in commercializing the IP they create form a critical component of a regional innovation ecosystem. Almost all dynamic, high-tech clusters around the country are anchored by leading research universities. In the 21st century, public and private research universities are the seed capital for creating knowledge that fosters scientific and technology-based economic development.

What’s more, the benefits of such commercial activity are often reaped locally and can redound to the university’s benefit. Extensive literature validates the degree of locally derived university IP, and confirms that much of the company growth that stems from university enterprise is in close proximity to research universities. At the same time, industry experts can provide their research findings to universities, which leads to new solutions and insights.

A quick cataloguing of the region’s assets suggests there is work to be done to increase the commercialization of research and therefore contribute to economic growth, but the 19-state Heartland region is already at a decent starting point.

In a study that I led for the Milken Institute on which American research universities were best at technology transfer through licensing and startup activity, there weren’t any top 25 universities in 15 out of 19 Heartland states.

Ranked 32nd, the University of Nebraska had the best performance among universities in these 15 states, followed by the University of Missouri at 34th and the University of Wisconsin-Madison at 35th. With that said, other states contain nationally significant crown jewels. Purdue had the highest tech transfer rating in the Heartland at 12th, and was first among public universities without a medical school, followed by the University of Minnesota at 14th, the University of Michigan at 16th and the University of Illinois Chicago-Urbana at 18th. In total, the 19 Heartland states had 25 universities in the top 100 in the nation.

I believe that public universities in the Heartland can learn a lot from best practices at Purdue, Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois by providing greater incentives and support for faculty to participate in entrepreneurial activities. Purdue provides a good case study. Established in 2013, the Purdue Foundry added a commercial accelerator to the mix of entrepreneurial support. Part of Purdue Foundry, Purdue Ventures established three venture capital funds with assets ranging from $2 million to $12 million to enhance access to early-stage funding. It also provided social network assistance in connecting talent and mentors among Purdue alumni with skills that align with a particular startup. Purdue also concluded that departments, schools, and labs needed to have additional discretion to include commercialization metrics among the set of impact criteria for tenure decisions.

If Heartland universities made patenting, licensing, or startup activity key factors in faculty tenure decisions or placed more weight on them, it would send a strong signal to young researchers that they support entrepreneurial activities.

If Heartland universities made patenting, licensing, or startup activity key factors in faculty tenure decisions or placed more weight on them, it would send a strong signal to young researchers that they support entrepreneurial activities. Further, public universities in the Heartland could increase the IP ownership rates provided to academic inventors. By providing greater financial incentives for these activities, states and universities could nudge more of their researchers in the production direction Edison indicated.

When one examines the numerous interactions, it becomes apparent that even local economic development officials fail to comprehend the full contributions of research universities and vast potential for further engagement. Communities must do a better job of supporting and exploiting the research universities in their midst. Not enough communities fully comprehend the importance of entrepreneurship in retaining a higher share of the graduates created in their own backyard. Many Heartland research universities can improve upon their participation in the local economy and spur stronger growth for the nation as well.

Ross DeVol is a Walton Fellow at the Walton Family Foundation (WFF) and a co-author of the State of the Heartland: Factbook 2018. DeVol will soon lead the new Core Economic Institute whose mission will be to improve economic performance in the center of the United States.

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https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/2018.12.20_metro_DeVol_Heartland_cover.jpg?w=270By Ross DeVol
How can the American Heartland raise the quality of its economic growth for its region and the nation? This was a core issue raised by the recent State of the Heartland: Factbook 2018 report, and the question continues to be raised in many articles.
No doubt it’s a tough question, but one promising strategy is clear, compelling, and ready to go: It involves better university engagement in commercializing research and supporting local businesses.
Research universities fulfill their mission by creating new knowledge and disseminating it. Universities achieve this by transferring human capital they develop and translating research to existing firms or startups via the commercialization process. Heartland universities hold their own in attracting federal research dollars, but more emphasis should be placed on securing industry-sponsored research and supporting faculty, staff and students in commercializing their intellectual property (IP).
In the 21st century, public and private research universities are the seed capital for creating knowledge that fosters scientific and technology-based economic development.
More universities need to think a bit more like Thomas Edison: He relied on a simple philosophy to guide research that led to world-changing inventions such as the first practical light bulb, the motion picture camera and an early version of the phonograph. “Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent,” said Edison. “Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.” This might be extreme for the nation’s public research universities, but instilling this mindset at universities throughout the Heartland could promote higher levels of business formation, successful scale-ups, and job creation.
This strategy rings true because research universities that engage in commercializing the IP they create form a critical component of a regional innovation ecosystem. Almost all dynamic, high-tech clusters around the country are anchored by leading research universities. In the 21st century, public and private research universities are the seed capital for creating knowledge that fosters scientific and technology-based economic development.
What’s more, the benefits of such commercial activity are often reaped locally and can redound to the university’s benefit. Extensive literature validates the degree of locally derived university IP, and confirms that much of the company growth that stems from university enterprise is in close proximity to research universities. At the same time, industry experts can provide their research findings to universities, which leads to new solutions and insights.
A quick cataloguing of the region’s assets suggests there is work to be done to increase the commercialization of research and therefore contribute to economic growth, but the 19-state Heartland region is already at a decent starting point.
In a study that I led for the Milken Institute on which American research universities were best at technology transfer through licensing and startup activity, there weren’t any top 25 universities in 15 out of 19 Heartland states.
Ranked 32nd, the University of Nebraska had the best performance among universities in these 15 states, followed by the University of Missouri at 34th and the University of Wisconsin-Madison at 35th. With that said, other states contain nationally significant crown jewels. Purdue had the highest tech transfer rating in the Heartland at 12th, and was first among public universities without a medical school, followed by the University of Minnesota at 14th, the University of Michigan at 16th and the University of Illinois Chicago-Urbana at 18th. In total, the 19 Heartland states had 25 universities in the top 100 in the nation.
I believe that public universities in the Heartland can learn a lot from best practices at Purdue, Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois ... By Ross DeVol
How can the American Heartland raise the quality of its economic growth for its region and the nation? This was a core issue raised by the recent State of the Heartland: Factbook 2018 report, and the question continues to be raised in ...